Other Education Groups and Projects

There are several groups and organizations around the world who
follow the GNU Philosophy and are working on projects aimed at bringing
Free Software to the education field. A few of them are listed below. If
your project supports only Free Software and it is not listed here,
please contact us at
<education@gnu.org> to let us know.

"FSFE's Education Team exists to raise awareness and bring the
benefits of Free Software to all groups involved in education. It aims
for a legal framework that prohibits discrimination against Free
Software and its users."

Guri is a group which was born inside an Italian High School as
the result of a program carried out by NGO Hipatia to raise awareness
about the role of Free Software in the education field. Guri opposes
the growing practice of treating knowledge as if it were a tangible
object subject to ownership. It fights to change the mainstream
cultural framework in Italy which prevents the exercise of some of
the most important human rights by posing dangerous threats to our
freedom such as software patents, unfair copyright laws, and the
adoption of proprietary, subjugating software.

The goals of the Guri project are to convert the educational
system so that it is based exclusively on Free Software and to extend
the freedoms it grants to every field of knowledge. Guri believes in
the power of education to shape a better society by teaching students
the values of sharing and cooperation. It advocates and works towards
a non-pyramidal system to share knowledge as a fundamental good for
humanity, a system in which everyone can participate actively and
access knowledge without restrictions.

To achieve its goals, the group takes action mainly in High School
and University environments, organizing workshops and courses to
promote awareness about the ethical principles of Free Software.

Hipatia is an international NGO (non-governmental organization)
that upholds the right of all human beings to access, use, create,
modify and distribute knowledge. It is formed by people from all
around the world who advocate the ideals of the Free Software
movement and work towards putting those principles into practice.
Hipatia emphasizes the importance of using Free Software in education;
to that end, its members often conduct workshops in educational
institutions, specially in primary and secondary level schools.

IT@School is a project of the government of Kerala, India,
started in 2001 to introduce Information Communication Technologies
into the State's schools. As part of the project, a customized
GNU/Linux operating system was developed, which is now being used in
more than 2,600 schools in the State. Training in the use of Free
Software was imparted to thousands of teachers, school coordinators
and students.

OFSET promotes the development and enhancement of Free
Software for the educational system and the classroom. It was born in
France but its members collaborate and work together towards common
goals from all over the world by using the internet as a means of
communication. Open and frank collaboration between teachers,
software developers, translators and authors has always been the key
to the success of OFSET's activities.

One important achievement of the OFSET group is
Dr. Geo, a
program widely used for teaching geometry. OFSET has also developed
Freeduc-USB, a bootable USB stick that contains useful
applications for the classroom.

Sugar Labs is a project that provides the
Sugar learning
platform, an interface specially designed to facilitate the use
of computers by children, with a special focus on its use in
educational environments.